The officers guided her down several stark white hallways before entering one with dozens of small, plain doors. They stopped at the sixth one on the right and pulled it open to reveal a tiny chamber with white walls and a single slab of foam for a bed on the left.
“Have a seat, kid,” said Hunt. “An investigator will be with you soon.”
She stepped in, her plastic shoes crinkling, and turned to look back at them. When the woman began to push the door shut, Sima blurted, “Do I have to stay handcuffed?”
“Until you get sorted out. You won’t be in here long enough to be worth the time to take them off and put them back on,” said Cheng, before sliding the door shut.
Sima stood in silence for a few seconds until a sharp click from the lock made her jump. The door had no windows, only a small hatch at the middle about a foot wide and three inches tall. She looked down at herself, squinting at the glare of the jumpsuit. Stark white walls, the intense pink, and powerful overhead lights hurt her eyes. Metal rings around her ankles pinched, less comfortable than the old power cables that once held her sandals on.
She paced around for a few minutes, absentmindedly fidgeting at her handcuffs. It all seemed so overkill to restrain a twig-thin girl her age so severely she couldn’t even wipe her nose. Were the EGSF officers that afraid of her? After a while of no one coming to retrieve her, she sat on the bed and pulled her heels up. She wanted to wrap her arms around her legs, but couldn’t. She wanted to wipe the tears streaming down her cheeks, but couldn’t. Oh, sure, she smelled like soap and none of this new clothing stuck to her anywhere. None of it had rips or stains, and even the flimsy prison shoes were more comfortable than her old sandals (if nowhere near as tough). She couldn’t even remember the last time her hair didn’t stink like mold or garbage. The stretchy bra compressed her chest with an unfamiliar tightness. She’d gone a few years without one, making do with only a thin cloth shirt. Then again, she didn’t have the biggest bosom in the world, so it hadn’t exactly been necessary.
That, of course, made her think of Sayed suggesting she stuff her shirt. That made her angry at him all over again out of jealousy. The cops wouldn’t have chained him up like this. She scowled. Damn kids. Everyone’s so nice to them no matter what they do. I’m still a kid, too! Jealous and furious, she struggled at the chains for a moment before her emotions plummeted to despondence and fear.
Terrified at what would happen to her, she curled up on her side and bawled, trying to stay as quiet as she could.
Eventually, she cried herself out and lay there feeling sorry for herself. The foam her face mushed into reminded her of the bed she had at home before she ran away. Her old room had been much bigger than this cell, but compared to what she’d been sleeping on for the past four years, this place did rank as an improvement. Granted, being locked in was a huge downside.
How long are they going to leave me in here alone?
Sima rolled on her back and stared at the blank white ceiling and its cluster of six small, round lights. She felt like a sandwich put in a display case at a food counter to keep it warm. Soon, her nose itched. Trying to ignore it made it worse. Thinking about how her hands remained locked to a belt around her waist made it itch even more.
With a grunt, she rolled over and wiped her face back and forth on the white sponge slab.
After, she lay there staring at the door. This is cruel. Why are they treating me like this? She huffed, blowing hair off her face. Because I’m an Outcast. I don’t matter. They can do whatever they want to me and they won’t get in any trouble. I should be grateful they didn’t beat me. Trembles took her again. The only chance she had to survive at this point would be to play as meek as possible and do whatever they told her to. Maybe she could beg for the holocom back and talk to that one nice officer—but would he still be nice after her arrest?
“Mom,” whispered Sima. “I know we didn’t really get along and stuff, but if you’re like still out there, and if, maybe, you have a teeny tiny little feeling of still being a mother… please help me.”
Time passed in agonizing slowness. She swished her feet side to side, tried to lace her fingers together, and stared at the ceiling.
Eventually, the door swung open. A different pair of female officers, both with medium brown skin and straight, short, black hair gestured at her to follow. Sima sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed, having to rock back and forth a few times to get enough momentum to stand without using her arms.
The women led her back out of the holding cells toward the shower rooms, but took a right turn before going that far. A short corridor ended at an elevator, which they rode up four stories. The chain between her ankles clattered at the floor as she walked, hurrying to go as fast as the women holding her arms tried to make her move. These two didn’t say a word, and didn’t look at all happy to have to deal with her. The way they glared at her made her feel like they thought her some horrible criminal who’d be better off executed. She wondered if the little kids she used to glare at feared her the same way.
She kept her head down and struggled not to fall flat on her face.
They led her into a narrow passage with a clear wall on the right and evenly spaced doors on the left, all with windows tinted dark. Beyond the barrier to her right, a farm of cubes, each containing a workstation and worker filed an enormous room.
A hard tug on her left arm jerked her to a stop by a door marked Investigator Ral Marr. The yank gouged steel into her wrists and triggered an involuntary whimper.
One officer knocked twice and barged in, dragging her sideways into a small office. The man behind the desk looked to be in his later thirties, with a somewhat messy head of thick, brown hair and a few days of beard. A single coffee stain marked his otherwise immaculate white shirt, and he wore an underarm holster with a fat handgun. So much clutter covered the desk it didn’t appear possible for a fly to land on it without knocking something to the floor. As soon as he locked eyes with her, he sighed.
“Sir, you requested the detainee from cell 33B?” asked the woman who’d pulled her into the room.
Sima cringed, unable to escape the painful grip on her biceps or the even more painful shackles.
“Fuentes,” said the man behind the desk, “can you explain to me why you’ve got a minor in high security posture?”
“Umm. It’s standard procedure to secure intake detainees in transport restraints, sir,” said the woman. “This inmate is still in processing and hasn’t been remanded to a custody facility yet. And detention was initiated in close proximity to rebel activity.”
The man leaned back in his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Did you two even bother looking at her file? I don’t know what kind of operation you think we’re running here, but I’ll not have a damn kid shackled like a serial bomber, especially a NV.” He lowered his arm and stared Sima in the eye. “You do know how to behave yourself, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” muttered Sima at the floor.
“Get that crap off her. She’s only a kid,” barked the investigator.
The women holding her by the arms squeezed a little tighter before letting go. As the slightly shorter one stooped to unlock the shackles from her ankles, the other woman removed the cuffs at her wrists, then pulled the restraint belt off.
Sima stood there as limp as possible without collapsing to the floor, letting them control her body until they’d finished removing all the hardware.
“Thank you. Dismissed,” said the investigator.
The two officers backed out of the room, but hesitated in the hall.
“I think I can handle an unarmed hundred-pound sixteen-year-old, thank you very much,” muttered the investigator. “Or are you lingering to watch me so I don’t do anything inappropriate with her?”
The door shut behind her, a little too hard.
He sighed and gestured at a white-and-silver chair facing the desk. “Have a seat, kid.”
Sima sidestepped and sank into the chair, ru
bbing her wrists. “Thank you for asking them to take the cuffs off. I swear I’m not gonna do anything wrong.”
Investigator Marr gestured at his desk terminal, the light from the screen casting a faint glare on his face where it overpowered the ceiling lights. “So… you conspired with members of the Underground rebellion to strategically cause a ground vehicle accident which resulted in the spill of nutri-packs for your personal gain.”
Sima shivered, speechless.
“Yeah, right.” He scoffed.
Was that a joke? Her eyes opened wide. “Umm. What?”
“Someone’s trying to fill a quota. This is total BS. You’re out of the system since twelve. Got a report here from one of the instructors at your old school, a Mrs. Noriega. Says she spoke to your mother when you missed a week of school, and learned you’d run away. There’s nothing here from your parents at all.”
“Yeah, well…” She fidgeted at the jumpsuit in her lap, staring at her hands. Her skin appeared darker than normal next to the painfully bright pink fabric. “No surprise there. She didn’t want me. Probably happy I ran away.”
“What made you do that? Didn’t get along with the old lady? No mention of your father here.”
She sighed. Anger at her mother snuck up behind her fear of this place and held it down, stalling her trembles. “My mother only had me because she was seeing this Citizen with money. Instead of marrying her, a baby made him leave. Mom blamed me for it. When I was eleven, she started seeing this other guy. He always looked at me creepy. Sometimes, he’d walk into the bathroom when I was in the shower. He lied and said he couldn’t wait, or something lame like ‘hey, we’re family now, right?’ but I know he just wanted to see me naked.”
Investigator Marr leaned forward, a distinctly angry look in his eye. “Did the man touch you?”
“The day before I ran away, I was in the kitchen making myself dinner. Mom wouldn’t cook for me once I got tall enough to reach the fabricator. He came up behind me and put his hand up my dress, touched my butt. Said a bunch of sick things, but that’s all he did. I told my mother the next day, and she got pissed at me. She accused me of trying to ‘steal her man.’ I ran out right in the middle of that argument and never went back.”
“Sorry,” muttered the investigator. “Wish I could get my hands on that guy. Look. I don’t for a minute think you’ve got any connection to the Seps, or had anything to do with ‘planning’ to tip over that cargo transport. You made it to sixteen without a single blip on your file. That doesn’t fit any sort of pattern that would lead me to believe you were up to something.”
She shook her head hard. “No, sir. I swear. I was just begging and saw all that food and… just did something really stupid.”
“There’s a fine line between desperation and stupidity, Sima. The officer who decided to detain you made some comments on the incident report that makes me think he actually brought you in for your own protection, and the ‘stealing food’ charge is like the stick in the other hand opposite the candy bar. There’s additional comments from some officers who spoke with you a few days before that about getting you off the street. Since you ran off, I’m pretty much of the opinion that these charges you’re facing are a bunch of BS so they can stick you on the Progenitor.”
“Yeah.” She lifted her head enough to peer through her still-damp hair at him. “They said something about a progenitor.”
“Right. The comments from the officers you spoke with a few days ago indicated you were apprehensive, and might not be in a good state of mind to make decisions.”
Sima bit her lip. “I’m kinda stuck… Not really making much glint begging anymore, and my friend wants to go work for Magdalena, but I can’t do that.” She blinked. “Hey, there’s this kid there who’s like twelve or thirteen. I think her name’s Flora. Can you get her out of there?”
Investigator Marr tapped at his keyboard for a few seconds. “Can’t make any promises due to some… arrangements, but if there’s a working girl there that young, I’ll see what I can do.”
She leaned forward in her chair, almost wanting to trust the guy. He’d gotten angry when she told him about being groped, and that same flicker of rage reappeared at the mention of Flora. “And there’s this guy who I ran an errand for, but I don’t wanna do that either. I didn’t trust him.” She rambled about the bomb, omitting that it had been a tracker the whole time, and told the investigator about the Scathers almost getting her. “I dunno. I’m scared of everything. That progenitor thing sounded like they’d put me in a lab and cut me open.”
He let out a sad chuckle, shaking his head. “Damn, kid. You’ve had a really rough life. Look, I won’t lie to you. Our patrol officers can be little heavy handed with Outcasts, and even the poor Citizens. Not everyone behind a badge has a true sense of civic duty. Some of them just do it for the paycheck. Others think the badge makes them better than everyone. I totally get why you didn’t trust us, and I wish you’d have given Gröen and Herling more time to explain.”
Sima glanced over her shoulder at the door, both female officers still waiting outside. “Looks like I have time now. Will you explain it?”
“I’d be happy to.” He smiled. “The Progenitor is a third generation colony starship. A crew of like eight thousand people is set to leave Earth for some other planet the eggheads found that’s pretty much an exact copy, only without all the pollution and overpopulation. I’m sure you know we’re running out of room on this rock.”
“A ship?” She gawked. “Seriously?”
“The Progenitor is going to establish humanity’s foothold on that other planet, and over the next few years, more and more ships will be sent out there, provided the colony flourishes.”
She gulped.
“Hey, relax. They wouldn’t be sending the ship in the first place if they weren’t ninety-nine percent sure it will flourish.”
“Umm.” She hugged herself and tried to stop shaking. “I’m not really cool with the idea of going into space. That’s like really, really scary. Can you like just let me go, since you like think the charges are made up?”
Investigator Marr tapped a finger at his chin for a moment. “There’s only so much I can do without risking my job. I’m sure the charges are inflated, but I’m stuck here. We can either charge you with theft and you go to juvie, which will probably turn into you being dragged onto the ship anyway… or you can go willingly and we dismiss the charges so you avoid a criminal record.”
She covered her mouth and nose in both hands, breathing hard. “But…”
“Be honest with yourself. What exactly do you have here that’s worth sticking around for? Becoming a prostitute? Running drugs for some street fixer? Starving in an alley somewhere, maybe catching a stray bullet the next time those Underground whack jobs pop up out of their rat holes?”
“Umm.”
“Do you want to die?”
She looked down. “No.”
“We’ve been taking in young Outcasts such as yourself and trying to give you all a new lease on life. The colony trip includes guaranteed adoption. When you arrive, you’ll get parents who actually give a damn about you, a home, a real bed, food… schooling and training. I saw your education record, Sima. Your grades were amazing. You deserve better than being in the street. This is a shot at a real life for you.”
She stared into his eyes for a long few minutes. In the four years that she’d been on her own, she’d had a lot of people lie to her. Either this cop told the truth, or someone had fooled him and he believed it. “They’re not going to send me to a lab and like use me for drug testing or cut me open?”
“No way, kid.” He smiled. “I give you my word. This is totally above board. You know how frightened you are of leaving Earth?”
She nodded.
“Well, that’s why they’re sweetening the deal with adoption, school, and everything. Most of the volunteers are engineers, scientists, doctors, builders… established adults with the necessary professional sk
ills to get a colony up and running. Few of them made time for families, so there aren’t a lot of children involved. Someone got the bright idea for young Outcasts to go up there and bolster the population. Do you want to spend the rest of your life, all three years you’ll probably have of it, stuck down here in this hellhole on the streets? Wouldn’t you prefer a chance at a real existence, in a place where there’s no such thing as Outcasts or Citizens?”
“That does sound good.” Sima rubbed her hands up and down her sleeves. “Too good.”
“Leaving Earth is a big deal, kid. That’s why it’s not too good.”
Sima looked down at her plastic shoes. The man had a point. What did she really have here to miss? She missed her old ratty tunic more than her mother. Her father had never even spoken a single word to her. She didn’t really have any friends. Even Cassie only kinda counted as a friend. More like two young people who bumped into each other more than twice. And the girl had been trying to talk her into becoming a whore. A friend would not do that. For the past few days, she’d been staring at death coming from three angles and no real way to avoid it. On Earth, she’d die running drugs, starve in the street, succumb to gang violence, or wind up at Magdalena’s and die inside.
Really, she had nothing to lose.
“Okay,” whispered Sima. “I’ll do it. You’re serious about dropping the charges?”
“Great, and absolutely. Give me a second to update the system.”
“Am I still under arrest?”
Investigator Marr typed without looking at the keyboard or screen, smiling at her. “Insofar as a technicality goes, yes… until the ship leaves with you on board. However, since you have volunteered for the Progenitor program, you’ll be treated like you are in protective custody rather than inmate detention. The charges will be vacated once you’re off the planet.”
Out of Sight (Progenitor Book 1) Page 11
